The metaphoric and metonymic poles

Roman Jakobson

Abstract

Roman Jakobson is probably the last homo universalis in the human sciences, who
both developed a theory of the mind and applied it to a panoply of disciplines.
Jakobson sees the metaphoric and the metonymic poles as the two basic modes or
ways of thought reflected in general human behaviour and in language. The meta-
phoric is based upon substitution and similarity, the metonymic upon predication,
contexture and contiguity. These two ways of thought are linked, though not in this
paper, but in several other papers of his collected works, to the paradigmatic and
the syntagmatic axes of linguistic expressions. The metaphoric and the metonymic
poles do not only underlie metaphor and metonymy in language, but, in alternative
ways, phenomena in all possible fields. such as language impairments, especially
aphasia, child language acquisition, literature (similarity in poetry, contiguity in
the novel), Freud's psycho-analysis, literary and art schools, the history of painting
and art movements, folklore such as folk tales and wedding songs. In fact, Jakob-
son holds out a research challenge not only to linguistics, but to all areas of semi-
otics. [R.D.]

Keywords: combination, contexture, contiguity, dichotomy, language impairment,

metaphoric pole, metonymic pole, predication, selection, similarity, substitution,
synecdoche. [R.D.]

The varieties of aphasia are numerous and diverse, but all of them lie
between the two polar types just described [i.e. similarity and conti-
guity disorders]. Every form of aphasic disturbance consists in some
impairment, more or less severe, either of the faculty for substitution
or for combination, and, contexture. The former affliction involves a
deterioration of metalinguistic operations, while the latter damages

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42 Roman Jakobson

the capacity for maintaining the hierarchy of linguistic units. The

relation of similarity is suppressed in the former, the relation of con-
tiguity in the latter type of aphasia. Metaphor is alien to the similarity
disorder, and metonymy to the contiguity disorder.
The development of a discourse may take place along two differ-
ent semantic lines: one topic may lead to another either through their
similarity or through their contiguity. The metaphoric way would be
the most appropriate term for the first case and the metonymic way
for the second, since they find their most condensed expression in
metaphor and metonymy respectively. In aphasia one or the other of
these two processes is restricted or totally blocked - an effect which
makes the study of aphasia particularly illuminating for the linguist.
In normal verbal behavior both processes are continually operative,
but careful observation will reveal that under the influence of a cul-
tural pattern, personality, and verbal style, preference is given to one
of the two processes over the other.
In a well-known psychological test, children are confronted with
some noun and told to utter the first verbal response that comes into
their heads. In this experiment two opposite linguistic predilections
are invariably exhibited: the response is intended either as a substi-
tute for, or as a complement to, the stimulus. In the latter case the
stimulus and the response together form a proper syntactic construc-
tion, most usually a sentence. These two types of reaction have been
labeled SUBSTITUTIVE and PREDICATIVE.
To the stimulus hut one response was burnt out; another, is a poor
little house. Both reactions are predicative; but the first creates a
purely narrative context, while in the second there is a double con-
nection with the subject hut: on the one hand, a positional (namely,
syntactic) contiguity, and on the other a semantic similarity.
The same stimulus produced the following substitutive reactions:
the tautology hut; the synonyms cabin and hovel; the antonym pal-
ace, and the metaphors den and burrow. The capacity of two words
to replace one another is an instance of positional similarity, and, in
addition, all these responses are linked to the stimulus by semantic
similarity (or contrast). Metonymical responses to the same stimulus,

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The metaphoric and metonymic poles 43

such as thatch, litter, or poverty, combine and contrast the positional

similarity with semantic contiguity.
In manipulating these two kinds of connection (similarity and
contiguity) in both their aspects (positional and semantic) - selecting,
combining, and ranking them - an individual exhibits his personal
style, his verbal predilections and preferences.
In verbal art the interaction of these two elements is especially
pronounced. Rich material for the study of this relationship is to be
found in verse patterns which require a compulsory PARALLELISM
between adjacent lines, for example in Biblical poetry or in the Fin-
nic and, to some extent, the Russian oral traditions. This provides an
objective criterion of what in the given speech community acts as a
correspondence. Since on any verbal level - morphemic, lexical,
syntactic, and phraseological - either of these two relations (similar-
ity and contiguity) can appear - and each in either of two aspects, an
impressive range of possible configurations is created. Either of the
two gravitational poles may prevail. In Russian lyrical songs, for
example, metaphoric constructions predominate, while in the heroic
epics the metonymic way is preponderant.
In poetry there are various motives which determine the choice
between these alternants. The primacy of the metaphoric process in
the literary schools of romanticism and symbolism has been repeat-
edly acknowledged, but it is still insufficiently realised that it is the
predominance of metonymy which underlies and actually predeter-
mines the so-called 'realistic' trend, which belongs to an intermedi-
ary stage between the decline of romanticism and the rise of symbol-
ism and is opposed to both. Following the path of contiguous rela-
tionships, the realist author metonymically digresses from the plot to
the atmosphere and from the characters to the setting in space and
time. He is fond of synecdochic details. In the scene of Anna
Karenina's suicide Tolstoj's artistic attention is focused on the hero-
ine's handbag; and in War and Peace the synecdoches "hair on the
upper lip" and "bare shoulders" are used by the same writer to stand
for the female characters to whom these features belong.
The alternative predominance of one or the other of these two pro-
cesses is by no means confined to verbal art. The same oscillation

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44 Roman Jakobson

occurs in sign systems other than language. I A salient example from

the history of painting is the manifestly metonymical orientation of
cubism, where the object is transformed into a set of synecdoches;
the surrealist painters responded with a patently metaphorical atti-
tude. Ever since the productions of D. W. Griffith, the art of the cin-
ema, with its highly developed capacity for changing the angle, per-
spective, and focus of 'shots,' has broken with the tradition of the
theater and ranged an unprecedented variety of synecdochic 'close-
ups' and metonymic 'set-ups' in general. In such motion pictures as
those of Charlie Chaplin and Eisenstein2, these devices in turn were
overlayed by a novel, "metaphoric montage" with its "lap dissolves"
- the filmic similes. 3
The bipolar structure of language (or other semiotic systems) and,
in aphasia, the fixation on one of these poles to the exclusion of the
other require systematic comparative study. The retention of either of
these alternatives in the two types of aphasia must be confronted with
the predominance of the same pole in certain styles, personal habits,
current fashions, etc. A careful analysis and comparison of these
phenomena with the whole syndrome of the corresponding type of
aphasia is an imperative task for joint research by experts in psycho-
pathology, psychology, linguistics, poetics, and SEMIOTIC, the general
science of signs. The dichotomy discussed here appears to be ofpri-
mal significance and consequence for all verbal behaviour and for
human behaviour in general.4

1. I ventured a few sketchy remarks on the metonymical turn in verbal art ("Pro
realizm u mystectvi," Vaplite, Kharkov, 1927, No.2; "Randbemerkungen zur
Prosa des Dichters Pasternak" Slavische Rundschau, VII, 1935), in painting
("'Futurizm" Iskusstvo, Moscow, Aug. 2, 1919), and in motion pictures
(Upadek filmu," Listy pro umeni a kritiku, I, Prague, 1933), but the crucial
problem of the two polar processes awaits a detailed investigation.
2. Cf. his striking essay "Dickens, Griffith, and We": S. Eisenstein, Izbrannye
stat'i (Moscow, 1950), 153 ff.
3. Cf. B. Balazs, Theory ofthe Film (London, 1952).
4. For the psychological and sociological aspects of this dichotomy, see Bateson's
views on "progressional" and "selective integration" and Parsons' on the
"conjunction-disjunction dichotomy" in child development: J. Ruesch and o.
Bateson, Communication, the Social Matrix of Psychiatry (New York, 1951),

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The metaphoric and metonymic poles 45

To indicate the possibilities of the projected comparative research,

we choose an example from a Russian folktale which employs par-
allelism as a comic device: "Thomas is a bachelor; Jeremiah is un-
married" (Fomti xolost; Erjoma ne Zentit). Here the predicates in the
two parallel clauses are associated by similarity: they are in fact syn-
onymous. The subjects of both clauses are masculine proper names
and hence morphologically similar, while on the other hand they de-
note two contiguous heroes of the same tale, created to perform
identical actions and thus to justify the use of synonymous pairs of
predicates. A somewhat modified version of the same construction
occurs in a familiar wedding song in which each of the wedding
guests is addressed in turn by his first name and patronymic: "Gleb is
a bachelor; Ivanovic is unmarried." While both predicates here are
again synonyms, the relationship between the two subjects is
changed: both are proper names denoting the same man and are nor-
mally used contiguously as a mode of polite address.
In the quotation from the folktale, the two parallel clauses refer to
two separate facts, the marital status of Thomas and the similar status
of Jeremiah. In the verse from the wedding song, however, the two
clauses are synonymous: they redundantly reiterate the celibacy of
the same hero, splitting him into two verbal hypostases.
The Russian novelist Gleb Ivanovic Uspenskij (1840-1902) in the
last years of his life suffered from a mental illness involving a speech
disorder. His first name and patronymic, Gleb Ivanovic, traditionally
combined in polite intercourse, for him split into two distinct names
designating two separate beings: Gleb was endowed with all his vir-
tues, while Ivanovic, the name relating a son to his father, became the
incarnation of all Uspenskij's vices. The linguistic aspect of this split
personality is the patient's inability to use two symbols for the same
thing, and it is thus a similarity disorder. Since the similarity disorder
is bound up with the metonymical bent, an examination of the liter-
ary manner Uspenskij had employed as a young writer takes on par-
ticular interest. And the study of Anatolij Kamegulov, who analysed

183ff; T. Parsons and R. F. Bales, Family, Socialisation and Interaction Proc-

ess (Glencoe, 1955), 119f.

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46 Roman Jakobson

Uspenskij's style, bears out our theoretical expectations. He shows

that Uspenskij had a particular penchant for metonymy, and espe-
cially for synecdoche, and that he carried it so far that "the reader is
crushed by the multiplicity of detail unloaded on him in a limited
verbal space, and is physically unable to grasp the whole, so that the
portrait is often lost." 5
To be sure, the metonymical style in Uspenskij is obviously
prompted by the prevailing literary canon of his time, late nineteenth-
century 'realism;' but the personal stamp of Gleb Ivanovic made his
pen particularly suitable for this artistic trend in its extreme manifes-
tations and finally left its mark upon the verbal aspect of his mental
illness.
A competition between both devices, metonymic and metaphoric,
is manifest in any symbolic process, be it intrapersonal or social.
Thus in an inquiry into the structure of dreams, the decisive question
is whether the symbols and the temporal sequences used are based on
contiguity (Freud's metonymic "displacement" and synecdochic
"condensation") or on similarity (Freud's "identification and sym-
bolism").6 The principles underlying magic rites have been resolved
by Frazer into two types: charms based on the law of similarity and
those founded on association by contiguity. The first of these two
great branches of sympathetic magic has been called "homoeopathic"
or "imitative," and the second, "contagious magic."7 This bipartition
is indeed illuminating. Nonetheless, for the most part, the question of

5. A. Kamegulov, Stil' Gleba Uspenskogo (Leningrad, 1930), 65, 145. One of

such disintegrated portraits cited in the monograph: "From underneath an an-
cient straw cap, with a black spot on its visor, pecked two braids resembling the
tusks of a wild boar; a chin, grown fat and pendulous, had spread defmitively
over the greasy collar of the calico dicky and lay in a thick layer on the coarse
collar of the canvas coat, frrm1y buttoned at the neck. From underneath this
coat to the eyes of the observer protruded massive hands with a ring which had
eaten into the fat fmger, a cane with a copper top, a significant bulge of the
stomach, and the presence of very broad pants, almost of muslin quality, in the
wide bottoms of which hid the toes of the boots."
6. S. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 9th ed. (Vienna, 1950).
7. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Part 1, 3rd ed.
(Vienna, 1950), chapter 111.

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The metaphoric and metonymic poles 47

the two poles is still neglected, despite its wide scope and importance
for the study of any symbolic behaviour, especially verbal, and of its
impairments. What is the main reason for this neglect?
Similarity in meaning connects the symbols of a metalanguage
with the symbols of the language referred to. Similarity connects a
metaphorical term with the tenn for which it is substituted. Conse-
quently, when constructing a metalanguage to interpret tropes, the
researcher possesses more homogeneous means to handle metaphor,
whereas metonymy, based on a different principle, easily defies in-
terpretation. Therefore nothing comparable to the rich literature on
metaphor8 can be cited for the theory of metonymy. For the same
reason, it is generally realised that romanticism is closely linked with
metaphor, whereas the equally intimate ties of realism with meton-
ymy usually remain unnoticed. Not only the tool of the observer but
also the object of observation is responsible for the preponderance of
metaphor over metonymy in scholarship. Since poetry is focused
upon the sign, and pragmatical prose primarily upon the referent,
tropes and figures were studied mainly as poetic devices. The princi-
ple of similarity underlies poetry; the metrical parallelism of lines, or
the phonic equivalence of rhyming words prompts the question of
semantic similarity and contrast; there exist, for instance, grammati-
cal and anti-grammatical but never agrammatical rhymes. Prose, on
the contrary, is forwarded essentially by contiguity. Thus, for poetry,
metaphor, and for prose, metonymy is the line of least resistance and,
consequently, the study of poetical tropes is directed chiefly toward
metaphor. The actual bipolarity has been artificially replaced in these
studies by an amputated, unipolar scheme which, strikingly enough,
coincides with one of the two aphasic patterns, namely with the con-
tiguity disorder.

8. C. F. P. Stutterheim, Het begrip metaphoor (Amsterdam, 1941).

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